one good apple

It’s been a hot and humid day today, no sunshine but lots of heat.  And then this afternoon the heavens open.  Thunder rumbling, lightning flashing, rain pouring down in torrents.  And all the time, it’s still warm and mild and this makes the rain refreshing.  Everything perks up a little, ourselves included and we hang out the bedroom window just watching the rain and counting the gaps between the thunder and the lightning and making sure Donald and Enid aren’t too freaked out by the whole thing.  Warm rain is one of my favourite things in the world.  Just the smell afterwards is worth it, when the whole place just smells green. 

And the rain really meant staying in this afternoon so I finished off a piece of embroidery for John.  He loves astronomy and I found this sweet little pattern from The Flossbox on etsy.  I found some cheap canvases in town a couple of weeks ago so just fixed the finished object to the back of one of them and hung it in the living room.

I loved embroidering this and John enjoyed telling me exactly what colour every planet and moon and satellite should be.  A good team effort.  I’ve ironed the pattern onto some plain terrycloth which I think I’ll make into some kind of little bag.  You can never have enough bags.  I’m also in the midst of making a leaving present for one of the girls at work who’s leaving in a couple of weeks.  I do not want her to go…

I’m going to enjoy the rain a little more and get ready for school tomorrow.  And eat a chocolate brownie x

It’s 8am on a Saturday morning and I’m typing this whilst making strange noises at Donald in order to make him stop chewing the wallpaper.  I couldn’t for the life of me tell you what it is that is so incredibly tasty about wallpaper but he doesn’t just rip it off, he attempts to eat it too.  The wall that appears to be his kill zone is now covered with LPs in order to dissuade him from chewing.  This hasn’t worked, he just moves them to one side and continues nibbling.  Sometimes, in a moment of ingenuity I’ll move the records around while he’s not looking so that they’re in a different order.  Then I watch him as he hops along, examining them and looking for his ‘in’ to the wall, in this case The Velvet Underground by The Velvet Underground, push it to one side and realise, hey, this isn’t the bit of wall I was working on earlier!  And then I observe, in much the same way as I imagine Brody and Hooper and Quint observed when that massive shark in Jaws started systematically dismantling the boat, the little sod knock down each and every record leaning against the wall until he finds his ‘patch’ and gets back to work.  Of course, he eats the record too now.  He has a particular fondness for the Bob Dylan ones, and Buffalo Springfield.  I couldn’t tell you why but Bruce Springsteen doesn’t interest him at all, nor does Van Morrison.

With this in mind, and having watched The Money Pit yet again last night whilst waiting for Dirty Sexy Money to start I cross-stitched this,

Just need a dilapidated house pattern to use as a border and I’m golden. 

I started making a coat last weekend but couldn’t be bothered to do the last bits of finishing - the button holes, the hemming, the dull stuff that if I was a millionaire I would get someone else to do - so that’s my job for this morning.  We have no plans for this weekend other that going to John’s mother’s on Sunday to give his dad his birthday present so I’ll probably spend the rest of the day fiddling with bits and bobs in the house and maybe have a trot into town. 

Going into town means I get to go on the bus.  I love going on the bus.  So much so that if I’m meeting someone in town and I’m running late I’ll still hang around at the bus stop for ten minutes to see if one’ll come along before I flag a taxi down.  On the bus you get to read and listen to music and it doesn’t matter how much you had to drink the night before.  You can listen to other people’s conversations and look at things out of the window when you go past.  I get to do none of these things on the fourty minute drive to and from work five days a week. 

Because of this whole Capital of Culture thing her at the moment there’s loads of building work going on and lots of old places being torn down.  One of the old houses my bus route goes past has the whole front taken off and you can see the old wallpaper and fireplaces and shelves still on the remaining walls.  It even has part of the staircase still intact.  I love looking in an imagining what it was like to live there.  When I was a kid I used to stand on my head with my back against the sofa and imagine what it would be like to live on the ceiling.  I suppose this is the logical, slightly more grown up version of doing that.

So, to town, to town, to buy presents for the Magic Yarn Ball swap I’m doing on Craftster at the moment.  And maybe a treat or two for myself too.  I’ll put these two to good use too I think,

Have a good weekend x 

Not got much mojo this week.  I think it’s probably a combination of going back to school and this miserable weather we’re having at the moment.  I mean, snow?  In April?  Come on… 

So anyway, I’ve consoled myself with embroidery and made this picture

that was meant to fit into a frame and be part of my mum’s birthday present.   Too big for the frame.  Meh.  It can become something else when I get a little more motivated.  I also finished off a shopping bag for my sister,

This week a kid who left school last year came in to say hello to me and let me know how he was getting on.  This is a kid who last year was banned from my classroom for forcibly berating me on the corridor because I’d ask him to leave the class.  And he wasn’t just banned from the classroom, he wasn’t even allowed to talk to me on the corridor, in the canteen, the whole kit and caboodle.  The whole thing had straightened itself out by the time he left, but if there was one kid I would not expect to want me to know what he is up to now, then it would be him.  And there he was bright as day and I was really very proud of him. 

When you work in a school you tend to get really insular.  The seasons come and go and the kids move up the school ladder but as soon as they leave you don’t really think too much about what happens to them.  So it was nice to see someone who just wasn’t made for school doing well in the real world.  It also made me realise why some people say in the same school for the whole of their career.  There’s something very comforting and cocoon-like about being in a place where not a whole lot changes.  Of course there are changes and there areunbelievable pressures that you have to cope with every day but there’s a lot of safety there too.  Like Neverland but with league tables and target grades, stacks of marking and not time to do it, kids who can’t wait to get out and grown ups saying, ‘I’m sorry, is my lesson interrupting your conversation?’

Today I’m going out for a pad around my neighbourhood with a Brownie Cresta II camera I got for £1 at a car boot sale a couple of weeks ago.  I’d bought it more for show than anything else so was quite surprised when I got home to find that it would work and had nothing missing.  Then it’s shepherd’s pie for tea, the only meal I cook that John actually enjoys eating. I’m quite the Gordon Ramsey you know … x 

I’ve always had an ‘I can do that’ attitude to making things.  Rainy Saturday afternoons of my childhood would be spent with a piece of fabric, some thread and a picture in my head of what I wanted by the end of the day.  And now, when I see a top or dress I like I automatically look at how it’s made  up and try to figure out how I would do that myself.  Of course half the joy of doing this used to be that what I would make would end up being significantly cheaper than the top I saw in the shop.  You don’t really get that any more, not now we have places that sell blouses for five quid and dresses for ten.

So now the pleasure comes from the fact that what your making is pretty unique.  I mean, the combination of fabrics and the way the finished item actually looks, even with the same pattern you have endless possibilities.  My grandma taught dress making at college and I often wish I took more time on sewing than I already do.  Yesterday I made this,

from a Simplicity pattern.   I’m going to wear it today, John and I are planning on going to Port Sunlight if the weather cheers up a little bit.  I also embroidered a shopping bag during the week and finished it off yesterday while the machine was out,

See that leopard print strip at the bottom?  That’s where my wash out embroidery pencil didn’t wash out.  The ghosts of cavorting animals have been gobbled up by a big cat.

Of course the best thing about this week is the fact that I am now on my Easter holidays.  Two whole weeks of *almost* nothing to do.  I’ve not had too much school work to bring home owing to the fact that I’ve been running around like a headless chicken the last two weeks to give myself a chance to breathe.  Happy Easter x

When I was at Primary School we used to spend every Monday morning writing an entry in or exercise books under the title, ‘What I did this weekend’.  I can remember every week recounting the things I did in the last two days, making sure my handwriting was neat and I hadn’t made any spelling mistakes.  And if I finished early I got to draw a picture showing what I did at the bottom.  Of course, when you’re a kid, weekends stretch out ahead of you full of blank hours to fill and endless opportunities until your back in your school sweater waiting for the bus. 

I found my old exercise books a while ago and was pretty amazed by the stuff I used to cram into a weekend.  John teases me about my Famous Five childhood, and it was quite idyllic to be honest.  Into town on a Saturday morning to go to the library and get our 10p mix for the week then the weekend was pretty much ours.  Fishing in the stream behind our house, feeding the horses in the field there too, creating worlds in the woods and going for miles on our bikes with a warning to be back by tea.  And on the rare weekend that nothing really interesting happened I could recount what Gareth or Janet or Anna or Nigel had done at the weekend and not once did any of these activities involve watching tv or playing on a computer game on going on msm.

I feel quite privileged now that I had those experiences when I was a kid and I feel quite sad that my - eventual - kids won’t get those same experiences.  God knows what they would write in their exercise books under the same title.  Crikey, I feel old all of a sudden.

So twenty years later, here is ‘What I did this weekend’,

Embroidery galore to start with.  I seem to have  routine going where I embroider during the week then sew up a weekends.  I also made a dress, but the light is terrible at the moment so I can’t get a good photo of it.

I’ve been reading this book,

that John bought for me during the week.  It is amazing.  I have to keep telling myself this is not a story, the idea that people could, and would, treat each other this way so recently is just bizarre.  It also tells the story of how the Berlin Wall came down, without which we probably still wouldn’t know about the Stasi, and it’s just one of my favourite stories of all time.  The absurdity of how it happened just gets me.  The idea that it was all down to someone not reading a memo properly.  You’ve got to love it.

There were other things, of course, Father Ted on DVD and Sunday dinner at Jean’s an dlots of cups of tea, but I won’t go on.  And so the rest of the evening will be spent watching Lost and finishing the second sleeve of my stripey jumper because I have been knitting too you know, I’ve just been keeping it quiet x   

I always think this term is going to be easy.  The nights are getting lighter, the kids know by now who’s boss (erm, yep - me) and hell, it’s only four and a half weeks from half term to Easter this year.  But every year it catches me from behind and creeps up on me until I’m at the point where lists of things to do are swirling round my head at all times.  And there’s always something to do isn’t there?

On Friday evening we took about fifty kids to the theatre and afterwards, in celebration of nobody hurting themselves or showing us up, we went out for drinks and dancing.  It wasn’t until Saturday morning, when it felt like Jimmy Saville was chasing rats around my head, that I remembered why I tend not to drink a lot any more.  So that was Saturday wasted, watching stupid telly and moaning quietly to myelf all day.

Anyhoo, today being Mother’s Day I thought I’d show you what I made for Carole,

I used the Kurt Halsey patterns from Sublime Stiching to make this pillow for her newly decorated room.  She also got an embroidered badge,

and a couple of other little things.  I made more badges while I was making hers,

and also started work on what I think will be another little pillow with a free pattern from Bad Birds who gives away the sweetest free patterns once a month.

The reason I’ve been doing so much embroidery and so little knitting at the moment is that I told myself I wasn’t allowed to start any new projects until I’d finished the ones I’m working on.  I don’t work well with rules, even the ones I set myself so I’ve turned my back on knitting for the time being in a kind of self-imposed sulk.  Very mature.  I have made a scarflet for a swap I’m involved with at the moment but I’ll post pictures when it’s actually been received.

I’ve updated my etsy shoptoday with some of my embroidered hankies and some of my first Gocco postcards.  I need to get more involved with etsy really, get into some discussions and stuff, but I can find it a little overwhelming at times, there’s just so much there…  Ah well, when I have a bit more time I’ll go for it.

I’m off into town with John in bit for breakfast and to buy some presents for my birthday in two weeks time.  I’ll be 28.   I’m trying not to think about it too much.

When I was about ten my mum was making a summer dress on her sewing machine when her finger slipped and flew under the needle.  The needle went clean through her fingertip taking the thread with it.  So off we went to the local hospital for mum to have a tetanus injection.  And while we were waiting I remember wondering what it would feel like to have a needle go through your finger, I mean, all the way through to the other side.  I’d once sewn an entire butterfly to my skirt by accident during an embroidery class at school.  I’d only noticed when I stood up to get some more thread and the butterfly stayed firmly attached to my lap.  But I’d never sewn my finger.  Never.

And in the same way that I’d image people wonder what it would feel like to step of the side of that ledge and other things that you know you’d never really ever do, every time I get my sewing machine out I wonder a little what it would feel like if my finger…

Well, you can guess where this is going can’t you?  Yesterday I found out exactly how it feel when a sewing machine needle goes through your finger.  And the worst bit was that when I called my mum to tell her, her first question was, ‘Did the thread go through too?’ and I had to admit no, it hadn’t.  It had snapped the needle though.  And I can tell you exactly how it feels.  It feels much as you’d expect it to feel when a sewing machine needle goes through your finger.  Agony.

However, I think it was worth it,

and for my mum,

I might sell some of these in my Etsy shop, I’ll see how it goes this week.  Today I am finishing off some bits and bobs then taking John’s niece and nephew to the Imperial War Museum in Manchester.  And telling everyone I see about how much my finger hurts… x

I remember ages ago writing about a Rainbow Brite jumper my mum knitted me when I was a kid.  Out of the many amazing things she did knit for me this was by far my favourite.  So the other day I was lolloping around on eBay and found this,

heaven to betsy I’m a happy bunny.  Off back to Yorkshire in two weeks to see my mum during half term and shall be availing myself of the joys that are Boyes acrylic yarns in all the colours of the rainbow and knitting this bad boy.  There were some other really sweet patterns in there too - Danger Mouse, Victoria Plum and Postman Pat - that amounted to an eighties childhood flashback.  Love it.

Part of the UK Swap that I’m involved in is to answer an optional question each week about knitting.  This week’s is,

What is your process when planning a project? Do you shop for yarn and then find a suitable pattern? Do you find your pattern and then go out to buy the yarn? Or are you stash-busting? If your stash is out of control, how did it get that way?

Well, I look for patterns first of all.  It’s all about the pattern mainly because I’m not all that fussy in terms of the yarns I use.  I have nothing against acrylic because when I started knitting acrylic was all I could afford and it doesn’t matter if you throw it in the wash with everything else because you can say a lot about the stuff but fussy it ain’t.  I’ve never bought a sweater’s worth of yarn without having a definite pattern in mind.  At the moment I’m meant to be stash-busting because I have a ton of 4-ply that I was given but 4-ply is a long term commitment and if I’m honest, I’m too flighty for the stuff - I want pretty obvious results fast.

So, that’s that for this week…  I finished another embroidered pillow case,

I’m loving the embroidery at the moment and spending more time on it than the knitting.  I bought some material today to make some handkerchief/serviette things with so will be spending the rest of the evening fiddling around with that.

Oh, one last thing.  Last night I went to see this,

and loved it.  The first time Johnny Depp sang the whole cinema began giggling but his cockney accent was mercifully better than in From Hell and Helena Bonham Carter was just ace.  I know some people think Tim Burton is just a one trick pony but if the trick is that good then who cares?  John didn’t want to see it so I went with my best friend from uni who was up visiting.  She’d had a rough night the night before and fell asleep halfway through.  Which wasn’t too bad until she started snoring and I had to wake her up.  Nothing to do with the quality of the film, she assured me…

For now, toodle-pip x

I got these gorgeous Japanese embroidery books from eBay at the weekend and set to work making a couple of pillow cases.  The pen still needs washing out but I’m pretty busy for a change this week and wanted to post them before the weekend.  So excuse the little blue ink patches (which reminds me, a kid was showing off his invisible ink to me at school today by spraying it on the collar of another boy in the class.  You can guess what happened next, can’t you?)

Repeat ten times: I will make something for someone other than myself, I will make something for someone other than myself…  I want to make some little embroidered hankies for my sister and various other people but for some reason it’s stupidly difficult to find ladies hankies.  Maybe I’m not looking in upmarket enough shops.

To leave you with, a picture of the girl - she’s applied to Mensa and is waiting their approval as I type,

I mean, approval is just a technicality, surely? x